Living with Slower Growth | March 2013

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What happens to Canadians if slower growth becomes baked in? Will our standard of living suffer, or is GDP per capita an abstract measurement of our true well-being? What are the implications for governments, which have made spending commitments that citizens see as a sacred trust? Is our social welfare model safe? Will low growth worsen income inequality. For this month’s issue we asked a collection of smart thinkers to examine what happens when a society accustomed to decades of growth finds itself facing the prospect of learning to live without that oxygen. Some writers recommend ways out of the slow-growth trap. Critics of untrammelled market forces see slower growth as a blessing, a way to begin reversing the worship of economic expansion, which can carry severe environmental costs and warp our values. But either way, we face making new calculations for our future.